Archive for ‘April, 2016’

Ray Ruby (Willem Dafoe) is the manager and host of Ray Ruby's Paradise, a New York strip club. He likes to think of it as his little Garden of Eden filled with the most beautiful and sexy women in the world. But things are not going well for this amateur singer and entrepreneur with a gambling addiction. His accountant, Jay (Roy Dotrice), informs him that they are short of cash and can't pay anyone. To make matters worse, the landlady, Lillian (Sylvia Miles), is hounding Ray for four months' back rent and is threatening to sell the space to Bed Bath & Beyond. The pole dancers are getting restless, and Ray's brother Johnie (Matthew Modine), a hairdresser from Staten Island who provides the cash to keep the place going, has decided to "pull the plug," as he puts it.
The action all takes place in an evening as things start to go up in (occasionally literal) smoke.

Two sexploitation films set in the weird, wild worlds of nudist camps are compiled on this saucy double feature from Something Weird video.
The first, Diary of a Nudist, follows a gorgeous reporter as she infiltrates a nudist colony in the hopes of exposing its immoral ways. However, once there, this sexy journalist finds herself enjoying it a little bit more than she anticipated.The Naked Venus, directed by low-budget film noir auteur Edgar G. Ulmer, tells the story of Yvonne, a sexy French woman who is dragged into court by her hateful mother-in-law after finding refuge in a nudist camp.

A grim, disturbing and engrossing portrait of children living in poverty on the streets of Sao Paulo, PIXOTE is one of the most powerful films ever made on the subject of urban degradation.

The story focuses on Pixote (da Silva), a boy abandoned by his parents, who becomes a streetwise pimp and eventually a murderer by the age of 10. The film follows the devastating adventures of a young boy who is sent to a "reformatory" — which, naturally, does anything but "reform" him. Instead he is immediately subjected to a world of cruel guards, rape, drugs, and false accusations. But when Pixote and his buddies manage to escape, life on the streets of Brazil is little better. Every comfort Pixote finds — whether sniffing glue out of a bottle, listening to music in a stolen car, or snuggling with an older prostitute — is short-lived, and ultimately just contributes to his descent down a slippery slope.

The film depicts a life of unrelenting squalor and hopelessness, and director Babenco does not flinch from confronting his audience with the most grisly details of his subjects' lives: violence in the reformatory; an aborted baby in a bucket in a bathroom; the young hero suddenly reverting to infancy, suckling at the breast of a momentarily sympathetic prostitute.

Punk, passion, politics and public protest collide, in this documentary depicting the fight to save rock and roll in Melbourne. In 2010, the iconic Tote Hotel – last bastion of Melbourne's vibrant music counterculture – was forced to close due to the archaic laws of the Liquor Licensing Commission. Filmed over seven years, this documentary puts the audience on the front line of an epic-scale culture war, depicting the plight of more than 20,000 fans – along with the bands who inspire them – as they strive to preserve their history and protect the future of live music.

The story for this film was loosely based on a real life story and a book by an Italian ex-Sergeant. It is 1941, and a group of eight misfit Italian soldier are deposited on an island in the Aegean Sea. Their assignment is to observe and capture. When their boat is sunk and their radio damaged, these men are soon isolated from the outside world. At first, the island appears to be entirely deserted, but the soldiers soon discover a small community comprised of women, a few old men, a priest, and lots of children. Their men folk were taken prisoner by the Germans and deported. Soon, this squad of Italian soldiers have become integrated into the community of locals and are leading the high life of sun, sex, drugs, sports, and leisure.

A beautifully done film of the Butterfly Lovers, a traditional Chinese love story.
This is the age-old tale of young Chuk Ying-Toi (Charlie Young), who disguises herself as boy to attend college in ancient China (3 A.D.). There she meets Leung Shan-Pak (Nicky Wu) and the two become friends. However, as the story goes the two begin to fall in love, which is a problem because Leung Shan-Pak thinks they're both boys. Ying-Toi fears falling for her classmate and revealing her identity to the other students at large.
Their short love affair ends in disaster...

Due to a clerical error, progressive vicar Rev. John Smallwood (Peter Sellers) is put in charge of the Church of England in Obiston Parva, a small town with a big pharmaceutical plant that dominates the local economy and culture. In his quest to help the needy and bring parishioners back to God, he first of all invites a family of village layabouts to live with him in the parish manse and then challenges the comfortable upper class villagers to use their wealth to really help others in need. Soon the whole town is in an uproar and eventually the needy, the greedy, the church hierarchy, and even the government are angry with him. Then the church hits on an idea that may resolve the situation, but see Smallwood physically closer to God than he might have expected.